If it costs a couple of pounds, per year to register a domain name, and hosting is around £10.00 per month, then why are you paying a lot more than this to your Web Developer? Is it because they told you this is too complicated to do yourself? Or you don’t have the technical skills and know how to do it?
Nonsense – but here are 3 questions to ask yourself to find out if you are in control of your website and how to get back in control and save yourself a pile of money at the same time.
Question 1: Do you own your domain name?
- Yes – If it’s not you, who is it? then get it back
- No – You need to find out, ask your web developer then get it back.
- Don’t Know – Same as ‘No’.
Question 2: Do you know who is hosting your website?
- Yes – If you’re paying for it that’s great. If not see ‘No’ above
- No – then find out and get it back.
- Don’t Know – Same as ‘No’
Question 3: Can you easily add or change content on your website? (Not including blogs)
- Yes – You’re in control, no further action needed.
- No – You need to be able to change things. Speak to your developer
- Don’t Know – Speak to your developer.
How to fix this
Always, speak to the people who built your website and ask them to hand over the domains, hosting and control of the website to you. Immediately. You will have paid – and will still be paying for the domain names, the hosting etc. so they belong to you. Ask them to give you a course in how to change the website pages. If they can’t then it’s probably time for a change. Stop letting your web designer/developer call the shots. In all likelihood they’re over-charging you for all this stuff.
Now, if you said ‘don’t know’ to any of the questions, then you need to take a slightly different tack. Speak to the people who built your website and ask them who owns the domain and who is hosting it then ask them to hand over all this to you.
Of course nothing is simple and Web developers are masters of obfuscation, fear, uncertainty and doubt.
They may tell you that they have to do all this stuff for you because it’s super-complicated. It isn’t but they’re already digging their own grave by saying these things.
Second, they might tell you that they have the best Content Management System in the world because they built it themselves and they can’t hand that over. It isn’t, so it definitely is time for you to change. Get your domain back under your control and start thinking about building your new website with something like WordPress.
They’ll have loads of other excuses for holding you to ransom, some of which even sound plausible, but they’re not. They’re money making concerns and usually they’re ripping you off.
Why am I paying so much?
The Cost of a domain name is anything from £1.00 to £10.00 per annum. Therefore, the maximum you should be paying to a web developer is £120-200 per annum. If you’re paying more, then ask them why? Remember if your website is built on WordPress, Joomla or Drupal then those systems are free.
We’re web developers. If you’re our customer, we ask that you pay for the domain, hosting and any other systems you need to build the website yourself, so that you are in control.